Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday September 22, 2010 @06:20PM
from the history-repeating dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With the Senate now looking to have the government block access to websites it deems to be bad (which seems to be called 'censorship' in other countries), it's worth pointing out that the Senate doesn't exactly have a good track record when it comes to deciding what technologies to ban. Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone, because they felt that it was wrong that they had to do the labor themselves, rather than an operator at the other end."

That sounds awfully like the older people who complain about "self checkouts" at a supermarket. For one thing, they're not mandatory (at least not yet), and for another, I vastly prefer them as they tend to have much shorter waiting times, and I can scan and pay much faster when doing everything myself. It makes no sense that "other people should be doing this for me" when all it involves is pressing a couple of buttons, and in the end the result is far more convenient - and should result in savings for you when the store or whatever has to employ less staff.

I have other criteria. At a store with friendly and helpful checkout staff, I will go to the human every time. At Canadian Tire, where their staff should generally not be allowed to continue to waste valuable oxygen, I head for the automated checkout with a smile.

Same argument around the proliferation of ATM's at banks. It was originally a vehicle to reduce staff expenditure (salary, benefits etc.), and save money. The irony is that you are often charged more for using an ATM transaction than to walk into a live branch and talk to a teller for the same transaction.

Same argument around the proliferation of ATM's at banks. It was originally a vehicle to reduce staff expenditure (salary, benefits etc.), and save money. The irony is that you are often charged more for using an ATM transaction than to walk into a live branch and talk to a teller for the same transaction.

You only get charged an ATM fee at an ATM that isn't your bank's. You wouldn't be able to perform an ATM transaction at a bank that isn't your bank either. Complain about ATM fees if you want, but this is a dumb reason to complain.

In the UK, ATMs in the walls of banks are generally free to all users, including customers of other banks. ATMs in other places - groceries, pubs, hotels etc - generally charge £1.50 or £1.75 - about $2.00.

I like the self-checkouts and find them quicker, but there are a few rules

1) Nothing age limited or in a security case that requires staff interaction anyway, just queue for the human when buying booze.

2) Unpackaged fruit or anything you have to weigh is a bit hit and miss.

3) Please please please understand the simple concept of showing the scanner the barcode, reverently placing the item in the dead centre of the scanner/scales platform thing and saying a prayer will not make it scan. I have seen far too m

I've had absolutely no problems that have held up people when I do something like buy a twelver of corona and a few loose limes. It takes no time to show your id, if they even care. Then you punch in the code on the produce sticker or look it up. I take less time than someone trying to figure out how the hell to swipe their debit card. Your rules could be condensed to "if you're a retard or have a cart, use the regular line."

I've never had any issues with the self checkout being buggy, and I use it almost exclusively at my local grocery store. You are correct however, that any savings are unlikely to be seen by the customer. It's the same issue I have with bringing my own bags... I'm saving the store money without seeing the benefit myself.

One of the grocery stores where I live gives you a discount if you bring your own bags (I forget what the amount is, but enough to make it worthwhile to save your bags and bring them back). Obviously they have smarter management than most grocery stores... if you give the customer an incentive to help you cut costs, you will have more customers helping you cut costs.

What do I care if an executive makes more money? My ONLY concerns when grocery shopping is that I can find and afford what I want, and get out of there as quickly as possible. If I have 2 items and there's an open self-checkout station, why WOULDN'T I want to use that instead of waiting 5+ minutes in even the express line?

Of course, it only makes sense to do it if you have a small number of items. The checkers who don't have to wait for the voice prompt to scan the next item can blow through 100+ items a lot faster than I could. But I like having the choice.

For me self-checkouts are slower. Simply put: I don't move as fast as the full-time worker does. It takes me about 3 times longer. Also the "scale" often doesn't register when I move my item into the shopping bag.

"Please put your item in your bag."

"I did."

"Please put your item in your bag."

(removes item. Puts back into bag)

"Please put your item in your bag."

"Grrr." (pulls item out of shopping cart and dumps into bag)

"Thank you sir. Please scan next item or press done to continue." ----- Yes that's right. I stole an item. Not my fault the machine doesn't work right. It's the store's fault.

I realize that grocery stores actually operate on pretty thin margins; but I have a very hard time believing that the fairly elaborate(and deeply buggy and annoying) "theft prevention" mechanisms in the self checkouts actually work well enough to justify their existence.

Pretty much every item in the store is marked with the weight of its contents, and the packaging weights within classes of objects don't vary too much(ie pound of shitty store-brand coffee vs. pound of the good stuff). Even an amateur should be able to break the weight-based verification system without breaking a sweat; but it is inevitably either failing to register my small items or freaking out because I've accidentally left the corner of my bag of earlier purchases just slightly on the scale. I'd assume that, if you are one of the pros(stealing mass quantities of baby formula to cut your drugs with or whatever) it isn't rocket surgery to haul out a scale and work out precise weights for your UPC swap scheme. Never mind, of course, that the checkout system doesn't know that it exists if you don't scan it.

I have to imagine that it would be more efficient to have one loss prevention/old lady helper dude watching over 4 or 5 checkouts that focus on efficiency, rather than paranoia, instead of having zero humans watching a bank of paranoid but ineffectual self-checkout units...

I was using a self-checkout at a grocery store and was somewhat bemused when I was asked to put a helium-filled mylar ballon in the bag. Thankfully there was an employee nearby to override the machine's demands. I wonder what weight was associated with that UPC? Was it negative?:)

This I can top. My local store has us pay for bags (voluntarily, mind you) by ringing in a PLU code. Only five cents per plastic bag. Pretty common fare around here. Anyhow, so I tell it I grabbed one plastic bag, and then it asks me if I wanted a bag for it. Which would then mean I'd have to plug in another PLU code, and then it would ask me for ANOTHER bag... and so on and so on....

My experience has been completely different, though my roommates is similar to yours. When we buy groceries I check us out.

I don't deny there are some bugs but I think the majority of problems come from being an immature technology.

The following are my thoughts on the casual observations of the way my roommate and I check out.

The machine has a very limited margin of error for the timing between scanning and weighing and scanning the next item.

The scale for instance can lag because the initial force of dropping the item in the bag registers more than rest weight. If you scan the next item before the scale stabilizes it throws the thing out of whack and it won't recover until the cashier comes over. In the meantime the software starts to lag and the instructions don't keep up with the customer's actions. This spirals into a very unpleasant experience for the customer.

One solution could be to wait until the end when everything has stabilized to report an error. And then to have an idea of which item it could be that it doesn't understand. It would also help if the stores realized relying on such exacting weights problem cause more shrinkage than people who go in with the intention of shoplifting.

I'll only use a self checkout if I don't have to wait behind another customer. Most people are way too technologically incompetent to scan their own merchandise.

Watch the slow ones some time. They don't understand the scanner has to see those little stripes. They'll bounce the product up and down on the scanner as if that's the magic action required to get it to cooperate. Or they'll wave it back and forth and back and forth like it's a mystical ritual. They'll never try anything that might actually help, like locating the barcode, or changing the orientation, or smoothing the wrinkles from the wrapper.

Never used a self-checkout. All it is is about dumping the people working the registers so management can get a bigger bonus. Thanks but no thanks. I like that those people have a job. No reason to take it away from them and all it could cost is a few minutes of my time a week.

I tried the ones where you walk around with a scanner just to see what the fuzz was about and what it does is let you stay in the store longer. Time you spend in the store is extremely important as it is directly related to turnover a

I hardly qualify as "older" and I honestly think self checkouts are a waste of time and resources. When they're properly maintained and every item is entered correctly in the system and has a bar code I'm sure they'd work perfectly. As a former retail checker for several years and a customer I know that's hardly ever the case. SKUs change too fast to keep up with sometimes and maintenance from the equipment vendors doesn't come often enough and they react too slow to emergencies. The number of times I've gotten stuck on "Please put your item in the bag" are too many because it can't detect the weight properly and not to mention it feels like the laser in the scanner is much weaker than the one on a proper checkout terminal. If there's an issue you have to wait for the single employee who manages at least four of those self checkouts to come over and fix it. Usually that means waiting for them to finish with the other one or two customers with issues.

All of these things are true, but I still find them much more convenient and pleasant than traditional checkouts. Then again, some people enjoy social interaction with strangers, but I'm not one of them.

I tend to think that I scan faster than the checker, but I don't know if that's because I'm actively doing the scanning instead of passively waiting for them to finish. I certainly feel like it takes forever waiting for the people in front of me to finish checking out.

Yeah it's certainly a lot less boring than waiting around. I have the whole paying process down to a fine art these days though at ASDA, my brain pretty much knows the exact timings and onscreen positionings etc that the machine will ask me if I want cash-back, or the card reader will beep to say to remove my card, so I waste minimal time and don't have to wait for the thing to ask me to do something, nor have to speak back to it.. if I'm only buying a couple of items I can easily knock through it in less t

If you have a lot of items, the cashier will be faster than you for several reasons. The main reason is the the self checkouts only let you scan one item at a time. You scan an item, put it on the scale, get next item, scan it, put it on the scale. A cashier can pick up one item and scan the same item several times if you are buying more then one. Say your stocking up on bottles of pop. Cashier will just pick up one and (beep)(beep)(beep)(beep)(beep), done.

Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits. You honestly still believe in such fairy tales?

Thirdly if such savings, in a fantasy world, WERE passed on to you, then you would see fresh produce for $0.98 per pound instead of $0.99 per pound. Face it, the company has passed on the cost of labor onto you, the consumer. And you think self-checkout is an advance and it makes no sense to do it otherwise!

Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits. You honestly still believe in such fairy tales?

Have you not noticed the insane price wars always going on between major supermarkets?

I don't really check the prices of stuff any more to be honest, but I assume the reduction in staff will indeed show up as savings, the same way that Amazon can afford to be so cheap.. razor thin margins to attract a large volume of customers.

OK...you notice the insane price wars, but you don't check the prices of stuff? WTF dude? How does that follow? You, as an educated person, surely know the theory of "loss leaders"? Then you assume that the reduction in staff will show up as savings? EARTH TO DUMB GUY: they don't do business like that any more.

That reminds me of when they started rolling out those club cards around here. The assertion was that they'd save you money if you allowed them to track your purchases. As it turned out virtually overnight the price on pretty much everything jumped drastically in price, leaving the club price suspiciously similar to the previous normal price.

Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits.

You greatly overestimate the ability of food retailers to retain extra margin. This is an insanely competitive industry that competes heavily on price. You definitely see some of the savings because if the supermarket doesn't pass it on, the one down the street will. Walmart has built their whole business model on this premise. Only way they can retain the margin is if they have no local competition since groceries are mostly a local business.

Thirdly if such savings, in a fantasy world, WERE passed on to you, then you would see fresh produce for $0.98 per pound instead of $0.99 per pound. Face it, the company has passed on the cost of labor onto you, the consumer. And you think self-checkout is an advance and it makes no sense to do it otherwise!

You are either very fast on the self checkout, or don't generally buy very much. Even when the self checkout works perfectly, and there are no hiccups that require the assistance of an attendant, I don't necessarily know where all of the bar codes are, and I am not as fast as any of the checkers that I have ever met. I would much rather have someone else scan my shit. Bagging, on the other hand, is a toss-up. I can do that only marginally slower than the local bag boys, and wouldn't mind if I had to bag

Both of those. Generally I don't buy much at a time, but also I can swipe things pretty fast by just guessing where the barcode will be and swirling it around in the general vicinity (helps that there are 2 scanners in the checkout as well and they can read codes from almost any angle).

Sometimes it's a pain getting a bag open, but other than that it's much easier to just drop stuff right into the bag than deal with it at a normal checkout. I only go to the normal checkout now when I buy age restricted stuff

To be honest, the self check out systems have gotten a lot better in recent times. The main objection I have to them is that I don't think that they've really nailed the process of bulk foods. And really produce for that matter, the things where you have to type in some sort of code and weigh it.

It has gotten a lot better, and I suspect that they'll start using an electronic system which prints out a barcode with weight and product type on it in the relative near future.

I see you haven't been to an Ikea in the past year, because there (at least in the LA area) self-checkout IS mandatory (caveat: I haven't been in the past 6 months so possibly by now they've scrapped this abortion of an idea).

What's worse is they made it mandatory basically the moment they rolled it out. It was a shock when I first saw it. Where normally there'd be 3 or 4 normal checkout aisles open, there were 8 "self checkout" machines in groups of 4 each. Each group was staffed by a single person. Sinc

The reason why we have a balance of power between the Judaical, Executive and Legislative branch. Is that Judaical branch will stop laws which are unconstitutional. Even if the other 2 branches are politically motivated to do such. Also why the Judaical branch isn't elected so they are not pressured in a way that they will loose their job for insulting any other member in the government.

So we got a lot of senators saying a lot of things... Most of it doesn't even get to real bill or even if it is added to

Remember when we had self-dial modems, rather than the auto dial? That was because the government-created monopoly ATT (aka Bell) would not allow devices to hook directly to the line. THEN the next thing they tried to do was impose a $10 modem fee on my line (because modems are on 10, 20, or even 24 hours a day - thereby overloading the line). I denied ever having a modem, which of course was a blatant lie, but I don't care.

"Gotta save those phone operators jobs!" This is really no different than those backwards member states (i.e. OR and NJ) that don't allow self-pumping of gasoline. They probably would outlaw self-dialing too if they had thought of it.

Every time I drive through NJ I pump my own gas, not because I'm anti-full service, but because they move so damn slow. I have better things to do than sit in my car for ten minutes waiting for an attendant to show up, especially if I still have a 2 hour drive ahead of me.

I know it costs OR gas stations revenue, especially near the borders. Whenever I have to drive through OR I gas up right on the border, and I wouldn't pay for gas in OR unless I was there for more than a day. And while I know the plural of anecdote is not data, I also know others who do the same.

Where in NJ are you that they let you get away with that? I've seen people shouted down for getting out of the car to buy a drink, just because the attendants *thought* the person was going to pump their own gas.

I've been a New Jersey resident for ~10 years. You're definitely full of crap because you would told be to STFU and sit back in your vehicle if you actually tried to pump your own gas. If you did not comply you'd be refused service and told to leave.

So I just say, "Fine. Whatever. Pump the gas."Or, "Go ahead, call the cops and arrest me. I don't care. Do you treat all your tourists like shit?"Or, "I'll be sure to tell everyone back home in Maryland how much Jersey sucks. 'Course they already know that."

Michigan is the last "Pricing Law" state, meaning EVERYTHING on the shelf must be priced or face fines from the Department of Agriculture. They claim it helps to create jobs, when the reality of it is, the small to mid-size stores never get hit, and they go after the BIG guys whenever the budget is running short (i.e. constantly). More associates aren't hired as a result of this, rather, less freight gets moved out on a daily basis due to budgets and then customers complain whenever they can't find anything

When I rented a car in Oregon, learning that I wasn't allowed to fill it, was a totally weird experience. And when the guy told me "You can't, state law," seriously, I thought he was pulling this tourist's leg. It had to be a scam. It just had to.

It wasn't.

I wonder if Oregonians feel that same strangeness when they pull up at a non-OR gas station and nobody comes out to "help" them.

In Germany the service of gasoline pumping is outlawed because of the health issue. If you pumping gas for 20 or more years 12 hours a day you will get very costly health issues. But if the customers pumping, they are pumping maybe once in a week, they will not notice anything.

Nice backwards thinking, USA. But on the other hand, most of you don't have health insurance anyway, so the service guy will die with 50 anyway.

I was in the camp of "those disconnected luddite idiots!" until I considered this quote from the article:

In his experience, the dial phone "could not be more awkward than it is. One has to use both hands to dial; he must be in a position where there is good light, day or night, in order to see the number; and if he happens to turn the dial not quite far enough, then he gets a wrong connection.

Then I thought to myself: isn't Slashdot the same crowd that was always harping on the iPhone for not having voice

Just because they didn't want to lift a finger to do something as simple as dial a telephone, that doesn't mean they need to ban it for the rest of us. The Senate is FAMOUS for passing laws that affect them (or affect everyone except them - you know, we get Social Security, they get a really sweet pension).

If they deem a website to be "bad", I have no problem with them blocking it from their own servers, but leave me alone. I can block things at my router quite easily, thank you. Should I be afraid that the Senate will try to ban toilet paper, because they can't manage to wipe their own asses?

Now, it's true that the resolution only impacted the Senate -- but when another Senator asked why they didn't ban dial phones from all of Washington DC, Senator Carter Glass from Virginia who sponsored the resolution apparently said that "he hoped the phone company would take the hint," and would remove all dial phones.

Do you want your local supermarket to "get the hint" and stop selling toilet paper?

Congratulations! I went down 2/3rd's of the page, skipping past an argument about self-checkout lanes, some bashing on Grey Goose Vodka, and reiterating about how much New Jersey sucks, before finally finding you, a person who had actually read the article and realized that this was about banning dial phones for Senators only.

That said, Senator Clarence Dill made a good point:

In his experience, the dial phone "could not be more awkward than it is. One has to use both hands to dial; he must be in a position where there is good light, day or night, in order to see the number; and if he happens to turn the dial not quite far enough, then he gets a wrong connection."

There's a massive difference between banning a technology and censoring websites. The reasoning behind each is different, the methodology, and the possible reactions and methods of circumvention. About the only parallel is "government doing thing that it really shouldn't be."

They're not even talking about banning a technology this time. It's not like they're saying "ban the Internet." This is a really weak excuse to bash the government and bring up something ridiculous and idiotic from the past. Do people really need an excuse to bash the government? Aren't there enough legitimate reasons to complain? Do we really need a story going "Look, you think censorship on the web is bad? 80 years ago, they were too lazy to dial their own damn phones! Isn't government so damn wacky?"

The point was that government is not very good at understanding technology, the benefits that it provides, and the fallout of any action to suppress it. We already tried this 14 years ago, banning "indecent" material on the internet. The problem is, they get something that looks good on paper and think the majority of citizens will get on board with, and pass it without even realizing how it will apply, who will be enforcing it, and if it's even workable. It's ok if you're specific. Ban child pornograph

They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF. This is similar to me demanding that the phone company turn off my call display, and Slashdot running the story as "Slashdot user attempts to ban call display!!" No attempt was made to ban them.

To the slight credit of the editor, you'd also have to hope the phone company would "take the hint and ban all call displays," for that metaphor to work...

Now, it's true that the resolution only impacted the Senate -- but when another Senator asked why they didn't ban dial phones from all of Washington DC, Senator Carter Glass from Virginia who sponsored the resolution apparently said that "he hoped the phone company would take the hint," and would remove all dial phones.

"They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF."

You're living in the Brave New World after Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before then, Ma Bell owned all the telephones, period, from the curb, to the wiring in your home, to the receiver itself. If Ma Bell said you're getting a rotary phone, you're getting a rotary phone, and nothing short of an act of Congress is going to stop it.

If Ma Bell says that you now have to start learning seemingly random strings of numbers to c

Dear US friends...
Help me out here. I am a male that has seen 2 centuries. I am older than 30 but younger than 50.
I have never ever seen someone fill up my car. You drive up to a gas station here, get out of the car, put the nozzle in, go inside and pay. But you guys actually have states were it is illegal to fill up your own car? Why? 'They took our jobs'-argument or is there something more behind it? Last couple of years you see here in the Netherlands more and more gasstations that don't have any perso

The only states that do it are New Jersey and Oregon, and they generally allow "mini service", in which the only thing the attendant does is turn the pump off and on. They usually claim that it's for safety reasons, ie. not letting untrained people pump a highly-flammable and potentially-explosive fluid into a tank, but Oregon also says it's for the jobs. And yes, it's seen as somewhat old-fashioned, if not backward, by most other states.

Ah, ok thank you too! Yeah for me it's weird. I have never seen that, since I was kid it was normal to fill up your own tanks here. But I sort of can understand the safety-motive (not really because well, It's safe enough given the complete lack of accidents here at the pump) but I can understand it. If only to protect people from inhaling the fumes:P

Yeah, much better idea is to make sure you can get through Jersey to stop in Pennsylvania or New York for gas. That way, you can pay more per gallon for the privilege of pumping it yourself. That'll show'em.

It's actually not. It's a bullshit excuse to pass protectionist policies, of the same kind that New York used to pass a law saying every automobile needed to be preceded by someone carrying flags to warn people it was coming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws [wikipedia.org]

The proof is that there are not mass casualties across the world from gasoline pump accidents as compared to Oregon and New Jersey.

I recently moved to Oregon from another state. If you were here, and asked why someone has to pump your gas - you will be told immediately not that 'gasoline is dangerous', but that the legislation 'creates jobs'. I often pull into an empty gas station and need to wait up to 10 minutes just for someone to swipe my credit card in the machine for me, press the button that corresponds to the grade of fuel I prefer, lift the nozzle from the machine and place it in my tank hole. T

Americans are heavily influenced by movies. In 2001 a movie titled Zoolander was released and there was a dramatic increase in gasoline fight accidents. As a result, several states had to ban people from pumping their own gas.

Ostensibly, the reason is that you are handling dangerous chemicals that could explode. The real reason is to keep jobs. But yes, there are states where the law is that individuals may not pump their own gas from public gas stations (you could own your own gas pump, though.)

If they are allowed to read it and learn about like we were. Really history will be very interesting for future generations. Up until 1900 every government kept tracks of their wars and dirty shit. That's the stuff we read about in the books today. But rest assured that since World War 1 nations are actively involved in trying to hide information forever, every 'secret service' will not have records on the more important and crazy operations. Afraid they would ever become public, not realizing that in 100 y

Given the fact that US economy is being destroyed because of the huge monthly trade deficit, caused by the US labor force being uncompetitive, which all came around due to government regulations, taxation, wage laws, subsidies, monopoly creation, setting interest rates, printing of money, waging wars, destruction of competition etc., the US Constitution needs to be fixed. Without a basic fix to it, the economy will continue plummet, until the hyper-inflationary depression hits and then a long restructuring process will start probably following a period of very bad civil unrest possibly with lots of intermediary bloodshed.

Here is the fix (and I am not a lawyer, so this needs to be solidified to fit both the letter and the spirit)

Congress shall pass no law, that changes the status of any entity in a way that allows that entity to get any preferential treatment in economy.

What I am trying to say is that government must not be able to affect economy through any law, this way no matter how much money is spent bribing the government, it's of no use and cannot result in a favorable economic outcome for those, who are doing the bribing.

This concerns anything at all that deals with economy, be it minimum wage, social security, income taxes, corporate welfare, bailouts, stimulus packages, setting interest rates, printing money (all this should be privatized), creating federal institutions that insure any type of lending or borrowing or depositing or any other moral hazard.

Gov't shouldn't be able to change the economic outcome by providing any monopolistic powers, providing exclusive trading rights, creating any discrimination in the market place, setting any laws that fix prices or contracts or whatever.

I hope my point is clear and obviously again, I am not a lawyer.

This is the only way to keep economy Free and going and not having it broken by various violent intervention by a government, which clearly ends up badly.

1. Justice system to take care of contract conflicts as well as anything that deals with harming individuals, running Class Action Lawsuits etc.2. Minimum Military to protect against invasion.3. Cops/Prisons.

The taxes must be only on things like sales and people who can't afford taxes should be able to file their income statement and get their taxes back.

Show me a Scandinavian country that has the kind of spending US has on military, pork spending, education spending, medical spending. Whatever US gov't is doing, it always ends up spending more than anybody else.

US is not built as a monarchy, right? It was the first (the only) country to be built as an attempt to be different, democratic republic, not affected by monarchy and special interests, using free market, but it's failing.

It's failing because the Constitution is not strict enough to make the free m

You are another misguided well intentioned person on the wrong track. Another victim of these think tanks from the 70s to sell any ideas that fuel corporate power which ultimately ends up undermining yours.

- you have already done the wrong thing and assumed you know me. In the 70s I was still living in the former USSR.

We have government involvement now but its as close to anarchy as we've had

- right, that's why you have gov't holding people in prisons indefinitely, torturing prisoners, forcing banks to take bailouts even those banks that didn't have any toxic mortgages on their books, buying out car companies, 'stimulating' economy by spending borrowed and printed money, telling you what you can and cannot buy as health insurance, having near 10% of your population work for the g

I'm not sure that it's so much a matter of sloth as it is a decided lack of guts. Right now the Democrats could very easily tell the Republicans to put up or shut up if they're going to filibuster, and actually make them follow through on it, I just don't think that they have the guts to do it.

The unfortunate problem is that the Republicans are doing what they've been doing now for a few decades which is screwing over the other party so that they look somewhat less incompetent while railing on the federa